The Birth of New Ethnoses? Examples from Northern Europe

Our Europe. Ethnography – Ethnology – Anhropology of Culture Vol. 3/2014 p. 7–20 Karol Piasecki Uniwersytet Szczeciński Katedra Etnologii I Antropologii Kulturowej The Birth of New Ethnoses? Examples from Northern Europe Abstract: One of the new phenomena in the contemporary world is the ongoing emancipation of ethnic groups. This is taking place at various levels both local (regional) and national. The paper presents some examples of such phenomena taken from the area of the Uralic languages of northern Europe. Two come from Lappland: the Kvens and the Finns speaking the Meankieli ethnolect. Two are from the Russian Fed- eration: the Izhma Komi (Isvatas’) and the Pomors, The last two come from Estonia: the Setu and the speakers of the south Estonian Voro language. The Pomors, who are generally regarded to be a Slavic group, have been included because of their acknowledging their mixed Slavic-Uralic origin. The ethnogenesis and contem porary situations of each group are in each case very complex and different. These differ- ences are chiefly due to the political and social situations differing in each Scandinavian country and in Estonia, all of them being different from the same in the Russian Federation. Keywords: Kvens, Meankieli, Komi-Izhma, Isvatas’, Pomoryans, Setu, Voro, ethnic emancipation, ethnogenesis For years ethnologists and culture scholars have been beating alarm for the frightening speed with which languages, cultures, and peoples are dying out with no chance of rebirth. The best-know of such reports listing the names of dying or already extinct ethnic groups concentrate on the non-European areas, those which are rather marginal from the European point of view. On closer examination we shall that the same problem concerns our own continent. Although it is generally known that the dying out of cultures, languages, or peoples is a natural process – it has taken place in both medieval and early modern Europe, not to mention the antiquity – we seem to forget that the same process is an ongoing one also today. the spectacular cases of Celtic languages (like Manx or Cornish) and the West Finnish ones (Livian, Votic, Izhoric)1 show that the process is taking place upon our very eyes. Those languages, and many others, went out of use or will soon do because of the pressure from their demographically and politically stronger neighbors. We shall have to consider them dead with the disappearance of their last native speakers, even though the examples quoted above do show some partly successful rebirth attempts. Most frequently, though not in every case, the death of a language is followed by the death of its ethnos for which the language in question was the basic vehicle of culture. The second half of the XX century, and even more so the early years of the XXI century, have brought a wholly new phenomenon, the reverse of the above. The wave of new social processes connected with the emancipation of minority and local communities developed into movements aspiring to recognize different groups as the minority (ethnic, national, 1 These are only examples. Over the past several dozen years many more languages died out (or are in the process of dying out). This concerns all language groups, which is disastrous for the speeding up of the disappearance of cultures that have been expressed in those languages. 8 Karol Piasecki language) ones. This phenomenon concerns almost all European countries. It is, of course, involved with the current politics, and conditioned by the present-day legal status. Even a general study of this phenomenon in Europe2 would take much more space than this paper allows. Therefore, i would like to concentrate on a few selected examples of the Uralic peoples (or ethnoses)3 of today’s Northern Europe. Two examples are taken from Scandinavia: the Kvens and the Meankieli (Meänkieli): two from North Russia, the Izhma Komi and the Pomors, and two are Estonian: the Setu and the Voro (Vöro) language (see Plate 1). These, of course do not exhaust the list of North- East European ethnoses that are in the process of being born. We have deliberately excluded the the Saamis4, for their problem concerns the extinction rather than the birth of new ethnoses, even though the example of the Saamis of the Kola Peninsula shows that also in this group we can come across the examples of a true rebirth4. We have also left out Finland, where the “dominating” that examples Pan-Finnism obstructs or even prevents the emancipation of the Karelians.5 The examples of Norwegian Kvens or Swedish Tornedalians (the Meänkieli)6 shows how the emancipation of a minority takes place in a contemporary de- mocracy7. The examples from Russia show the various paths of ethnic emancipation in the Russian Federation that are usually strongly connected with current politics. The Setu and the Voru language examples8, are quoted to prove that the emergence of new ethnoses of ethnolects is not limited to large and well-establi shed state organisms, but may also turn up in smaller or younger communities9. The Kvens This group has appeared only recently in in official sources and statisticsPiasecki ( 2011), but the group of this name is already mentioned in several medieval Nordic sagas10 and is located in the area of present-day Botnia. The legendary kings of Kveneland were 2 One of the Polish examples here could be the question of the Silesian nation (or ethnos) and the “godka” or Silesian ethnolect. 3 The rank of each of them, that means establishing whether we are dealing with an ethnographic, regional, language groups and with sub ethnos, ethnos, or a nation, is not only a point of controversy among scholars, but most of all, a political problem (compare: Shabaev, Dronova, Sharapov 2010). 4 This also proves that the ethnic (national) censuses, if not conducted properly, reflect the current political situation much more than the nationalone (for example, the number of the Saamis of Kola Peninsula given in official sources has increased 10 times over the past 50 years!). 5 Their being ethnically and linguistically different from theSuomenlaiset – that is, the speakers of Finnish or “Suomi” – is not questioned anywhere outside Finland. 6 There is no good Polish name for this group at present. The topical literature uses the name “Meankieli”, but it is the name of the ethnolect, not an ethnonym so it rather should not be used. The Polish language norms require writing the language names without capitals, and the names of peoples (nations), with a capital letter. Tornedal – that means the Tornio River valley (Torniojoki in Finnish, Tornealven in Swedish) is itself a Swedish name, so it’s not correct when referring to the Finnish population. 7 “Contemporary” has to be stressed in view of the very recent discrimination procedures of the Scandina- vian administrations against the Saamis (calling them “Saami minority” would be prejudicial as it was Sapmi, the Saami motherland, that was taken over by invading states). 8 The Setu, as explained later on, live on both sides of the Estonian-Russian border and therefore are not a “purely” Estonian example. 9 The Russian Federation, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Estonia are not all the states on whose territories the Uralic peoples live. For the sake of completeness one should also consider the Szekler, a Hun garian subeth- nos living in Romania. However, as we have limited the area of our considerations to Northern Europe, and both the historical conditioning and the present-day situation of the Hungarian diaspora are very different from the circumstances of Northern Europe. We leave the Szekler to the Balkanists. 10 Particularly those connected with the legendary Biarmia (Leont’ev, Leont’eva 2007). The famous Egil Saga (published in Polish in 1974) mentions Farawid, one of the kings of Kvenland. The Birth of New Ethnoses? Examples from Northern Europe. 9 Plate I: General location of the groups discussed in the text (orig.). Abbreviations: S – Setu and Voro, M – Meankieli, K – Kvens, P – Pomortsi, I – Izhma Komi supposed to become the future kings of the Orkneys.11 Their country is usually located on both sides of Northern Botnia, but on the famous Olaf Magnus Magna Carta Marina, that is dated 1555, Kvenland is missing, but a small-print inscription south of Tromso reads “Berkara Qvenar”, that is “Kven Berkars” of the Kven itinerant traders. Hilda Ellis David- son states – though without giving the source of the information – that the Kvens, together with the Biarms and the Finns (that is, the ancestors of the Saamis of today), supported themselves hunting wild reindeer and breeding the animal (Davidson 1979), but other sources are silent about it. Possibly they were one of the numerous West Finnish tribes as- similated by the Suomenlaiset, or Suomi Finns, during their later expansion. One has to 11 At the moment we can see – particularly in internet – the trend of mythologizing the ancient Kvens and Kvenland, making them a local power, and placeing their origins in the distant past. However, there are no grounds to accept the hypothesis of a once-strong, ancient state of the Kvens, On the other hand, the continuity of remarks on the subject in historical sources right up to modern times seems to suggest that the Kven tribe must have once played a very important role in the region. 10 Karol Piasecki stress that the Kvens of today are a new group that has no genetic continuity with the Kvens of old, and their name is clearly a transplanted ethnonym12 which in Norwegian originally designated a Finn as such and a Karelian. The contemporary Kvens are the descendants of the Finns who have been migrating from Northern Finland to Norway – to Finnmark and the Tromso province – and who set- tled the Varanger Peninsula in late XIX century.

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